Category: Guns

The Inky is editorializing against Congressman Pat Murphy because he apparently doesn’t hate guns enough:

It sure looked that way yesterday, when Murphy voted with the National Rifle Association – and against the best interests of cities in his own backyard trying to stem gun violence, including Philadelphia.

Murphy was among 85 House Democrats who joined 181 Republicans in approving a bill that would roll back gun-safety measures enacted by the District of Columbia, after the Supreme Court struck down the city’s 32-year-old handgun ban in June.

I’d be willing to go to bat for Congressman Murphy if he was legitimately having a change of heart on the gun issue, but what does one of his staffers say?

Aides insist the congressman hasn’t changed his stripes. He still favors a ban on assault weapons and supports “reasonable gun laws.” The District of Columbia vote was about “striking the proper balance between constitutional rights and reasonable restrictions.”

Who is running this campaign?  If you want to play the moderate-on-the-gun-issue suburban Democrat, the way Murphy is playing it is exactly wrong.  It’s guaranteed to get him no allies.

I’m angry with Murphy’s support of the so called “assault weapons” ban.  This violates one of our commandments, “Thou shalt not support gun bans!” HR1022, which Murphy has signed on to a sponsor, will ban most of the firearms that high-power competition shooters compete with, including the AR-15 and M1A.  It will ban the Ruger 10/22.  It will also ban all semi-automatic shotguns.  That’s not moderate.  That’s extreme.  Murphy will get no support from us, no matter what he does on the DC issue, if he doesn’t withdraw his sponsorship of this bill.

On the other side of the card, the radical gun control activists in Philadelphia are furious that Murphy is supporting the Second Amendment when it comes to the Heller decision.  Now even the Inky is calling him out for his ridiculous triangulation on this issue.

Patrick Murphy did not win Bucks County in 2006.  He lost it narrowly.  Because Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District includes parts of Montgomery County, and the City of Philadelphia, that was enough to win him the seat. Running on gun control, but only sort of, is exactly the wrong politics to play for this district.  Murphy needs to pick a side, and I think the Congressman would find that truly embracing gun rights would find him a lot more support than gun control.

There are more than a dozen shooting clubs in Bucks County, several of which have memberships in the thousands.  A lot of these guys are union members, and have common cause with the Democratic Party on other issue.  Why is Congressman Murphy throwing these votes away for what measly support he’ll get from the few gun control proponents out there?

Right now his triangulation is ensuring that on the gun issue, Patrick Murphy is losing votes on all sides.  That’s never smart politics.

Congressman Jason Altmire was one of the representatives to get up on the House Floor last night to speak in favor of HR6691:

When the D.C. City Council decided to ignore a ruling from the United States Supreme Court and when the District of Columbia decided to play games with the Constitution of the United States, it was they that brought us to the point where we are today, where congressional intervention is necessary to uphold the rights of Washington, D.C. citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution.

As a signatory of the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the unconstitutional gun ban, I was outraged at the D.C. Council’s new gun restrictions. So I joined with Mr. Childers of Mississippi to help craft the Second Amendment Enforcement Act, which is the text of the amendment we are debating here tonight.

This bill repeals D.C.’s gun ban and permits law-abiding gun owners the right to keep their firearms in ways that will ensure their availability and use for self-defense. This amendment ensures that the intent of the Supreme Court and of the second amendment are upheld for all citizens, including those who live in the District of Columbia.

As I said before, when it counts, Altmire has been with gun owners.  While I greatly appreciate the work Congresswoman Hart did for gun owners when she was in Congress, I think it’s hard to agree that Jason Altmire hasn’t been a leader on this issue.